


Bedroom

by shiveringshadows



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, Gen, Late Night Conversations, a little shippy but also not really, innocent fic again, unprompted visits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-12 12:50:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7935184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiveringshadows/pseuds/shiveringshadows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ciel had been to Sebastian’s room twice in the three-and-some years since the day it became Sebastian’s room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bedroom

Ciel had been to Sebastian’s room twice in the three-and-some years since the day it became _Sebastian’s room_. It transformed subtly – or so it seemed to Ciel – from an empty servant’s quarters to something that no longer exactly belonged to him. This seemed not wrong but not-quite-right, either, as it was so soon after the manor had been restored from ashes, its ownership transferring automatically into his hands. He reminded himself that because Sebastian was a belonging and not a person, not even a human, the room still belonged to him, too, but it felt different after he gestured to it weakly – still exhausted from the past few days and nights of readjusting to something that even remotely resembled a normal life – and told the demon he was free to use it. Sebastian didn’t politely resist, or even comment, really, but Ciel felt obligated to explain himself anyway.

“Even servants have rooms,” he said, bordering on defensive. “It wouldn’t look right if you didn’t. And this way you’ll have somewhere to go at night so you won’t wander around and disturb me.” Sebastian smiled at that, and Ciel felt it was a mocking smile, but he refrained from letting himself prickle pointlessly with irritation.

He didn’t count that day as one of the two visits he’d made to Sebastian’s room, since it wasn’t really a visit; neither of them had gone inside. Sebastian had just accepted it with then-unpracticed grace and they had moved on. Ciel would not have known what was in it to give him a 'tour,' anyway, or at least no better than Sebastian. The demon had replicated everything so perfectly Ciel was sure he knew every dusty, dark corner of Phantomhive Manor as well as or better than he or any of his ancestors, who had spent their entire lives within its walls.

 

 

The first visit happened on a summer night in 1886. Summers in England tended to be stormier than the other seasons, and although it had been several months already since Ciel had returned to his home and Sebastian had masterfully reinstated it, the sickness from _that month_ had yet to subside significantly. He had made progress, with Sebastian giving him plenty to do during the day – and some days were better than others – but being kept busy wasn’t the same as recovering. And he had never liked violent thunderstorms – especially not those with successive lightning strikes so bright the room was as bright as it would’ve been in the daytime.

Little Earl Phantomhive endured the storm alone for as long as he could; forty-five minutes was about the extent of his patience and willingness to suffer needlessly. Sebastian would make him get up at six o’clock in the morning either way, he was sure. Ciel made up his mind and slid out of bed, one small foot searching carefully for the solid floor and the other following it.

He didn’t knock when he arrived at Sebastian’s room, and Sebastian only glanced up from his work at the writing desk when he entered. The butler didn’t look surprised – just curious. “Whatever is the matter, young master?”

“Nothing,” Ciel said, with as much authority as a ten year old boy can muster. He made himself at home, perched on the edge of Sebastian’s unused bed. “The lightning is keeping me up and those blasted windows in my room aren’t helping. It’s rather a pain.”

“I see.” Sebastian had turned to look more fully at him. Ciel was gently kicking his feet in the air between the bed and Sebastian’s chair.

“You’ll let me stay here for a while, then.” A command rather than a question.

“You may, young master.”

 

 

Sebastian’s room was the largest of any of the servants’ rooms, as he was not only the first Ciel officially employed, but also one of the most hierarchically important in the household. Tanaka and Mey-Rin were each given their own as well – there was a need for privacy, especially for the only woman in a house full of men, however big it may have been, but they were smaller than Sebastian’s. Bardroy and Finnian shared a room that was by mathematical comparison larger, but there were two of them. Two people, two beds, and at least twice as many clothes and belongings made up for it.

Sebastian was the only one who didn’t accumulate any personal effects, and so his room remained bare, if not also the cleanest. It wasn’t that Ciel wasted any time ‘inspecting,’ their rooms – if anything, that was another of Sebastian’s jobs – and in fact he had never actually _been_ to any of them except Sebastian’s – but he was sure the other servants had bought things with the money they earned, or kept things they’d found or had acquired before they had come, or been brought, to England.

Bard had plenty of little American things, and he made use of many of them in daily life, like his favourite lighter and certain pocket knives he reserved not for cooking but for sharpening pencils and such. Some of these things were intangible rather than physical: habits, manners, accent, dialect. Tanaka had a few things he’d smuggled from Japan in his youth; Maylene and Finnian hadn’t brought anything with them because they hadn’t had anything to bring, but Finnian especially had no trouble in finding things to save and keep – dried leaves and flowers and birds’ feathers he found in the estate gardens.

Although Ciel did not really expect for Sebastian to have any sort of decoration in his room, much less belongings of his own, he noticed just how plain it was on his second visit – one just because, on a January night following his twelfth birthday. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about the bareness of the shelves and desk, beyond household matters; of course, he didn’t care what Sebastian did with a room he barely used anyway, and it was very much like Sebastian as it was: he had not absorbed anything despite the possible thousands of years he’d been alive – an amount of time Ciel could barely imagine, although he’d felt as though he’d spent that long in that filthy cage, ankle chained to the bars on one side. Sebastian had not taken anything into himself in all that time, not from the cultures he’d immersed himself in, nor from past masters. Ciel sometimes wondered vaguely how many there had been before him.

“You have expensive taste when you’re choosing things for me and the rest of the manor,” Ciel observed, from his perch on Sebastian’s bed, which he assumed Sebastian had still never used. “Don’t you, Sebastian? And yet this room is as plain as the day I assigned it to you.”

He heard him chuckle in response. “I would not presume to spend my master’s money on personal items.”

“Oh, please. You know as well as I do that you get forty-five pounds a year. Though I suppose it isn’t as if you really need or want anything.”

“Indeed.”

Ciel had moved to lay on his back now, across the width of the bed, so that Sebastian and his chair would appear to be hanging from the ceiling rather than right-side up if he tilted his head back to look. He heard the accounting book close – the airy slap of paper-on-paper – and the low screech of wood sliding against the floor as Sebastian vacated the chair.

“Indeed,” Sebastian repeated, taking Ciel’s chin between his forefinger and thumb and tilting his head back gently enough. “I want only my young master’s soul.”

“How novel.”

“Sarcasm is unbecoming on a member of the nobility, my lord.” Ciel felt Sebastian's gloved fingers move from his chin to his cheek, and then the slight sting of a pinch.

“Oi.”


End file.
